bush

Yesterday during the President’s Q&A session with House Republicans Mike Pence asked President Obama why he won’t support across the board tax cuts like Reagan wanted. This has been a key issue for Republicans for decades and I am wondering why they never did it when they had total control of the government.

Think about it for a minute. During the Bush years, when Republicans controlled the House and Senate, Republicans never enacted such a widespread tax cut. Instead they only focused on the wealthy. They even went as far as securing these tax cuts through reconciliation, so they didn’t have to face a filibuster.

As matter of fact, under Obama we had had more widespread tax cuts than we ever did under Bush. 95% of working families saw tax cuts last year.

I think it’s just really interesting that Republicans only seem to want these tax cuts when Democrats are in control. Sounds like they are afraid that the cuts could lead to big fiscal problems and the Republicans don’t want to be the ones steering the ship when they occur.

This has got me absolutely speechless:

Mr. 9/11 himself, the man who was the mayor of the town that took the biggest hit on 9/11, is now denying it ever happened?

"What [Obama] should be doing is following the right things Bush did. One of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror. We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We've had one under Obama," Giuliani said.

I hope people start asking him why he is denying that 9/11 actually happened. Again we have another example of Republicans who care nothing about terrorism, except as a political tool.

UPDATE:

George Stephanopoulos, who interviewed Giuliani when he made this absurd claim, posts the following on his blog:

“What he [Obama] should be doing is following the right things that Bush did -- one of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror. We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama,” Giuliani said. “Number two, he should correct the things that Bush didn’t do right. Sending people to Yemen was wrong, not getting this whole intelligence thing corrected.”

December 2009 was the first month that no U.S. forces were killed in hostile action in Iraq since the war started:

We hear the phrase “24 hour news cycle” an awful lot, but in reality we don’t have a 24 hour news cycle. Instead this decade has seen a 24 hour news cycle evolve into a 24 hour opinion cycle.

Take the case of my previous post of Mary Matalin claiming that Bush inherited 9/11 and reduced unemployment his first year in office. Both statements are completely false. When Bush took office unemployment was at 4.2% and had raised to 5.7% after his first year in office. Now a lot of people can defend this in part because of 9/11 and they would be right, but the fact is that Mary Matalin flat out lied and no one in the news world tried to correct her.

Welcome to the 24 hour opinion cycle.

What we are seeing now is more people able to take to their airwaves and spread their opinion, completely unchallenged and void of fact. This is evident on FOX, CNN and MSNBC. Even Keith Olbermann is more of an opinion show than news show.

People talk about how our nation has become so polarized over the past decade. We now see everything is right and left, or blue and red. This is a direct by-product of the 24 hour opinion cycle. Take Matalin’s comments yesterday. In our busy lives a lot of people don’t have the time to fact check people like Matalin. Instead they quickly catch a little talking point and it becomes fact to them. I am sure someone today will sit around the water cooler and say “you know that Bush reduced high unemployment he got from Clinton in his first year. I heard that on CNN yesterday.” Of course they are just echoing the very same lie, but they don’t know any better.

"We are tired of watching as year after year candidates offer up detailed health care plans with great fanfare and promise only to see them crushed under the weight of Washington politics and drug and insurance lobbying once the campaign is over." Candidate Obama

Here is the video of candidate Obama saying this, with big thanks to Lee Stranahan for finding it

I may have voted for the man and even supported him during the campaign, but his actions throughout this health care debate have been inexcusable and I never pledged undying allegiance to the man. As matter of fact since I did support candidate Obama I have worked harder to hold him to a higher standard than someone people I never did support. To me that is what it means to be a Democrat, a liberal and an American. As I said the other day, some of the Obama supporters out there are starting to remind me of the right wingers who supported Bush at every twist and turn as he broke his campaign promises, only to turn around and blast him the day he left office.

Andrew Breitbart has obtained a leaked memo stating that the detainees at Guantanamo will be moved to Illinois. Senator Dick Durbin and Governor Pat Quinn are applauding the move, but government officials are saying that no final decision has been made yet and the memo is only a “draft”.

This brings me to another issue – the leaked memo. We are dealing with a leaked government document that deals with national security. Should the Obama administration take the Bush approach and investigate the leak? Hell why not put Breitbart under oath and force him to reveal how he got it? This practice was championed by people like Breitbart when it was done under Bush’s regime, so he should welcome it again, shouldn’t he?

The story of the White House party crashers is apparently the only thing that has happened over the extended weekend if you listen to MSNBC, so let me take a moment and bring up my thoughts.

There is a lot of finger pointing going on with this. Some are blaming the Secret Service, while others point the finger at the White House. The latter is completly obscene, but if the right wants to travel that path then let’s remind them of a man who posed as a reporter for a fake publication and sat in the White House press briefing room for a couple of years under Bush. Jeff Gannon not only sat in the briefing room, but also was in attendance when countless foreign leaders were visiting. Security at these events are much more relaxed than they are during a state dinner.

But I really want to focus on the Secret Service. Yes there was an apparent failure here, but what caused that failure? People seem to be ignoring the fact that President Obama has received more threats than any other president, so the Secret Service is stretched thin trying to keep the President safe as it is. The fact that Obama has been such a big target of threats has become a laughing issue for the right, which it is not. It’s a very serious issue, and one that the Secret Service takes very seriously. Perhaps it’s time to increase the size of the Secret Service.

Then there is the issue of what to do with the couple. Many are calling for criminal charges. I’m sure prosecutors can find something to charge the couple with, but will it stick? The most I can think of charging them with is trespassing and that is a rather minor crime. Instead of being out for blood we should be looking for solutions, like not allowing this to happen again.

Two former DOJ officials under Bush have written an op-ed supporting the decision to bring Gitmo detainees to the U.S. to stand trial. The money line:

But some prominent criticisms are exaggerated, and others place undue faith in military commissions as an alternative to civilian trials.

The people exaggerating the trials are the very ones who want to put politics above national security and we can’t count on the media to set the record straight. Why should they? Fear drives ratings, so the media will continually push a meme to scare the shit out of everyone for their own personal gain.